She'll Be Back

Writers: Bree, Dana
Date Posted: 29th December 2006

Characters: R'alt, Isaline
Description: R'alt tries to tempt Isaline into enjoying his company again, but she turns him down for reasons of her own.
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr
Date: month 1, day 7 of Turn 4

Shards, what a day. The sun was out, the sky was so sharding blue, and the roar of the ocean sounded so inviting. Almost sensual, in its way.
Like a woman's rhythm. Maybe he'd go out for a swim in a bit, and drag Isie along with him whether she liked it or not. A grin twitched his lips at the thought, but he kept his eyes closed. He could feel her eyes on him. And R'alt knew that she'd been watching him for some time now. Just watching. He didn't think she'd spoken a word to him for at least a quarter of a candlemark.

Not that he was complaining, of course. It was nice to be admired, and it certainly served his inflated ego well to know that she must obviously be thinking about a few illicit things she could do to him. And R'alt wouldn't protest if she wanted to. Maybe she needed a bit more incentive.
A lazy, arrogant grin curved his lips as he opened his eyes, slanting her a look. "You know, Isie, if you want a full view, you can go ahead and take off the clout. I won't care."

Isaline's eyes jerked back to the pile of sand she'd been absent mindedly playing with, running it through her fingers. "I don't know _what_ you're talking about," she retorted, hoping her cheeks weren't turning pink.
Shards, he'd caught her staring.

Shifting, he pillowed his head on his hand, exposing the muscular definition of his arm to its full advantage as he looked up at her, still grinning. Whenever an opportunity arose to tease her, he never ignored it. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, you know. You've done a lot more than just looking before, after all. You've seen it. You know what it looks like."

"Doesn't mean I want to look again." She was trying for a little of her old tone, but the delivery was somewhat ruined by the fact that she wouldn't look at him. "Don't be so full of yourself, R'alt."

His eyes glinted. "Try looking at me when you tell me you don't want to, and then maybe I'll believe you."

Isaline glanced up at him and wrinkled her nose. "Why do you care anyway?
Don't you have _enough_ girls chasing after you to satisfy your _enormous_
ego yet?"

"Uh huh." He smiled at her, unperturbed. "But we had fun together last time. I wouldn't mind repeating the experience, Isie."

"It's fun _now_," she retorted, glancing back down. "You know, you're kind of like two people. Right now everything's fun and teasing and like it always was..." This time her cheeks really did flush. "I don't know if I like it when you treat me like the other girls, though."

"Like the other girls?"

She shrugged and let her fingers trail through the sand, making aimless patterns. "When you get all intense and your eyes get that funny look...
it's just like you're not even seeing me, anymore."

R'alt sat up, wondering what she was sharding talking about. He didn't bother hiding the confusion on his face when he looked at her, though he was trying to understand. Or at least make an effort to understand. "But I do see you, sweetheart."

Frustrated, Isaline dashed her fingers through her little mountain of sand. "I don't know what I'm saying. It just changed everything, what happened. And not all of it in a good way. And I want it back."

He frowned. "If I recall, you're the one who jumped me that first time.
So why'd you want sex if you didn't want things to change?" R'alt still wasn't quite sure that it _had_ changed stuff between them. Things seemed the same to him, just with that whole sex quality to be taken under consideration now. But he still teased her--and mercilessly--like he always had. And they still did things together that they used to before Impressing--except riding runners. Sex wasn't really that big of a deal, was it?

"Because I didn't want to always have to wonder," she replied grumpily. "I just thought we'd do it and that'd be that and then things could be normal again."

"Darlin', I've seen the novels you hide under the cushions in your weyr.
If things don't ever go back to 'normal' for fictious people, how can you expect things to go back to 'normal' for real, living and breathing, sex-driven people, hmm?" But he still wasn't quite sure what the big deal was...

Isaline blushed. "I don't know what I was thinking." She wasn't about to admit that she'd been trying to get over her silly childhood crush on him.
She could only imagine the teasing she'd get from that, not to mention what would happen if he figured out her crush might not be as far in the past as she'd hoped.

"C'mon, Isie..." He scooted closer. "It's just sex. If you don't make it a big deal, then it's not a big deal."

She glanced up finally, and felt her stomach do that terrible flip-flop that she'd thought she'd left behind at fourteen. Shards, she didn't _want_ to make it a big deal, but she had the sinking feeling that letting R'alt coax her into bed again was going to leave more than her stomach doing flip-flops. And she was _not_ going to fall in love with R'alt!

Instead she rose to her knees and started dusting the sand from her arms and hands. "Well, we don't have to make any sort of deal out of it at all.
You go back to chasing the pretty, silly girls and I'll go back to rolling my eyes at you and poking you in the side with my elbow for being a pain."

"Are you sure you _really_ wanna go back, sweet?" He gave her one of those lazy grins of his. "I saw the look on your face earlier."

Isaline's cheeks flamed as she scrambled to her feet. "You're imagining things," she said firmly. "You just want to _think_ every woman wants you.
Go dump your head in a bucket of cold water."

The expression on his face turned wicked. "I'm not so sure that's the part of me that needs a dunking in cold water, Isie."

With a frustrated noise, Isaline threw her arm out to point back at the water. "Then go throw yourself in, for all I care!" Without waiting for a response, she turned and fled.

R'alt grinned, completely amused and unphased as he watched her tear across the sand. She'd be back.

Last updated on the December 31st 2006

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She'll Be Back